The latest version of XpoLog Log Management will contain a huge face lift with regards to the UX/UI.

Listening

In the last couple of years we have received a lot of feedback from everyone who has used and/or evaluated XpoLog. For those of you who are not familiar with our numbers, we provide a Log analysis platform with approximately ten thousand installations worldwide, some of them are based on our free version, others on our OEM customers, data centers etc.

Of all the great feedback we received, there were two prominent points that were constantly repeated, the first one was something along the lines of “great technology”, “very smart analytics”, “rich functionality” etc. The second one was that the UI doesn’t look good, and the UX is not “cool enough”. I’ll tell you, it’s easier to listen to the first one and ignore the second. Human nature tends to prefer compliments, rather than criticism. But it is important to remember that constructive criticism can actually be helpful to us in the long run.

Last year I was speaking to analysts Colin Fletcher and Jonah Kowall from a leading research and analyst firm, Jonah later joined AppDynamics. At the end of that briefing, they summarized 3 primary points of feedback:

great technology and road map

bad UI/UX

more marketing needed

I left the meeting having a clear and focused plan for our next version; the message got through, I hope.

Single Page Apps and AngularJS

We did have plans to work on the UI/UX but we did not plan on working on it immediately, and only after processing all the feedback did we decide that doing only cosmetic changes was not going to cut it.

We wanted XpoLog to take a different direction when it came to UI/UX experience. When building a long term roadmap and strategy, if you lay the right foundations, something great can be built on top of it.

We selected AngularJS and Single-page app as we believed these are the front end technologies that will help us build a great user experience. There are a couple of technologies out there that help you build great UI and UX experience, in our case, fast and responsive user experience help us build smarter log data analytic tools.

Our creative team designed our new UI, only to redesign it again and again. We had users trying mockups, we had long arguments about buttons and flows, we built and rebuilt, we changed and we tested. We added more than 20 new data visualization types including 3D types. We are planning on adding many more.

We designed and implemented new ways of creating logical applications and visualization structures. We enabled data manipulation from visual components. We created operations and DevOps room screens with unique functions. We changed the data visualization gadgets and application structures and dashboard design. We built new UI/UX concepts for data analytics. We are proud of it all and we hope you guys will like it too.

It’s time to say thanks to our users, customers, friends, partners, critics and more critics ;). You guys really push us forward in our journey of building great products. I am sure our work just started but now it’s time to try the first release. Later this year we will redesign and reinvent the search console and the analytics console.

My next post will dive deep into logical application management and structure, smart tagging, and how to build a visualization strategy across IT.